


What Child is This?

by a_xmasmurder



Category: Little Favour (2013)
Genre: Depiction of war, Descriptions of Injury, Gen, Mental Health Issues, PTSD, Pain, Poor Wallace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 16:12:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1272829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_xmasmurder/pseuds/a_xmasmurder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the chaos at the warehouse, Wallace is let go. He's not sure what to do with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Child is This?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Provocatrixxx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Provocatrixxx/gifts), [Lestradesexwife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lestradesexwife/gifts).



> So, I finally watched "Little Favour".
> 
> Whoa. 
> 
> This is what happened in my brain afterwards.

He stumbles through the door of his useless first floor flat, still blinking away the fog that gripped his mind after…

Jesus.

 _No. Don’t think, act. Stop thinking. First thing - treat your injuries._ He nods to himself once, hard, and knocks the pizza box off the metal counter again in his haste to get to the postage stamp of a loo. He flicks on the light and has to brace his hands on the edge of the sink at the image the dirty mirror shows him. “Damn…” He’d known it would be bad. Knew it even before the bastards had started in on him. But Jesus...He sucks in a breath and winces as his battered ribs complain and his bad shoulder screams at him. He shakes his head with disgust. “Shit!” He slaps the cabinet open and grabs his medicine out, shaking a few onto his palm and swallowing them dry. The door stands open as he stares at his bloody reflection. One eye narrowed, swelling on the brow. Deep split on his cheek, probably busted the bone with that one. _Hit with the butt of that fucking shotgun._ Other than the throbbing pain from being pistol-whipped and beaten within an inch of his life, the rest of his face wasn’t too bad. He twists the cold tap on full and fills the dirt-smeared cup of his palms, splashes it onto his face and washes the congealed and dried blood away. He blinks at the burn in the open wounds and presses his tongue against a loose tooth. Then he has to grip the sink again as his equilibrium leaves him, nearly dumping his broken arse on the floor.

The blood in his mouth, both real and imagined, is what finishes the job. All at once, the memories hit him, blindside him right in the fucking frontal lobe, and he goes down to his knees. The one that had gotten kicked out from beneath him protests hitting the concrete, but he is too far into the flashback to care.

_\---Hot blood soaking his gloves - "_ _We’re gonna fuckin’ die here" - "_ _Not if I can get through, give me something to work with!"_

_The little girl, staring up at him with soulful brown eyes, her dirty face streaked with tears, pleading silently with him._

_"Ace, get your arse moving!" - "_ _Wait, wait, we’ve got a child here!" Bright flashes of light, dirt falling around him._

_"Shit, get her out, it’s a mess over here!"_

_He freezes, because the face that had just watched her parents get gunned down has changed. The nameless girl’s face isn’t hers anymore, it’s Lilah’s. Sad turns to stoic - no. Not stoic._

_Dead. Emotionless._

_"Ace!_ _Wallace!"_

_The bullet that rips through his shoulder is no longer hated, but welcome.---_

The phone buzzing at his hip jerks him back into the hell that was his new life, and he bangs his aching head against the loo wall. “Fucking -” He blinks back the angry, confused tears and swipes his thumb ( _sore, dislocated probably_ ) over the screen to answer the call from -

“I’ve got a payment heading your way for your assistance, Ace.”

He swallows. Hard. His throat goes dry, and he closes his eyes as he starts to shake. “Yeah.”

There’s a pause, then James is talking. “I can’t explain exactly - “

“Don’t.” He bites the word out through the sudden wash of rage that clears everything out of his battered body. “You called in the favour, I agreed to it. It’s done. No more.” _No more of your crazy assassin child, or is she even yours? Did you train her? Is she even human?_ He shakes his head. “Lose the money, lose the number. Don’t contact me again.”

Before he can hang up, James starts talking again. “Just take the money.”

“No.”

“Wallace. Please. You did a good thin -”

“I got the _shit_ beaten out of me!” He can’t keep the desperation out his voice, but he can...what? _Breathe. Just breathe._ So he does. He sucks in cool air and listens to the running water above him. “I did what you asked, I watched Lilah...and then got caught up in the deal.” He scowls painfully. “Which was part of the plan.”

James’ sigh over the line tells him that’s exactly what it was. A plan. “I -”

“No. God, no. Just.” He can’t get up, not with the pain medication coursing through his veins and his brains scrambled. “You. You were _there._ You know what they did.”

“Wallace -”

“You pulled me out of that mess, and for what? For you to fucking throw me into another one?” His hands shake, rattling the mobile against his bloody ear. “You’ve seen the records. My records.” More silence, and he huffs out a rough almost-laugh. “Of course. You know everything. That’s why you chose me. You could have...oh, hell, I don’t know.” The huff turns into low chuckles that turn into the sort of hysterical laughter that hurts more than it helps. “I’m an idiot.”

“ _Wallace_.”

He doesn’t even press the ‘End’ button before he chucks the phone against the wall in the hall. The mobile shatters into rubbish, and he whines up at the ceiling. The memories are right there at the edges of his mind, banging at the shutters and scratching at the walls he’s erected to keep them at bay. And he was doing so well, too. He’d found a girlfriend - well, a girlfriend of sorts. More like a woman who doesn’t mind the over-watchfulness and the twitch reflexes as much as the dates cut short because of his damned stress disorder. He’s been ignoring the psychiatrist assigned to him by the Army, but that is for the best, really. Dr. Sanjay is much too busy to deal with his particular mental state. He’s been going to do his own shopping, driving through London as if it weren’t months after… He’s been doing so fucking well.

And then this.

He slaps the floor at his hip and screams as loud as he can in frustration. “Fucking James!”

He has to get up off the cold floor and take care of himself. First things first. He turns his aching head to the left and sees the emergency medical kit he keeps for those ‘just in case’ moments that he knew would happen, paranoid fucker that he is now. “And sure enough, look at me needing the damned thing.” He pulls it out of the bottom cubby of the cabinet and staggers to his feet. Every bone, organ, joint and blood cell left in his body hurts. He blinks hard and unzips the whole thing, all the pockets, pretending that his operational mind doesn’t know exactly where every bit of his kit is at every moment of his day. As he digs out the suture kit and lidocaine, he has a stray thought go through his mind.

 _I’d locked my Rover, but I was able to get in without the key. Why didn’t I think of that? Jesus, I’m a right idiot, falling for that one._ He feels like putting his head through the mirror, but for once he doesn’t act on a violent impulse. Go him. He does grip the bag a little tighter and growl in irritation. “Idiot, idiot.”

But how did they get in? He thinks about it. _Keys. Oh, fucking duh. Keys._ And he’s hit with a sudden urge to find his keys. The keys to the Rover. They’d probably still be with one of those bastards. He curses his dumb luck, but still lurches out of the room to his kitchen. He searches frantically, every corner and crack and crevice. He even checks the fridge and the pizza box on the floor. No keys. _Shit._ “Shit.” He’s too tired and hurting too much to suss out where exactly he’d come from. He’d just...fuck, what was he going to do, get a new set of keys from the dealer? “Oh, yeah, I was kidnapped a couple days ago and watched a little girl slaughter a bunch of Russians, lost track of my keys in the melee, could you cut me a new pair quick?” God. Idiot.

His vision greys out a little at the edges, and he hits the floor again with a groan. This time, when he closes his eyes, they stay closed.

**  
  
  
  
**

_His shoulder is on fire. Blood is just pouring out from the armhole of his armour. He can’t even think, and Logan is screaming at him, in his face. He grunts and nods despite the sheer stupid agony that rips through his shoulder at the motion. “What the fuck happened?” His words aren’t much more than ragged gasps, but Logan gets it._

_“You’re hit, Ace. We gotta go!”_

_For a moment, he can’t process the request. He doesn’t understand why they can’t just stay right where they are. It’s perfectly good cover, isn’t it? “Why?”_

_“Jesus, did you get shot in the head, you dumb shit? Bomb blew the wall down!” Now Paddy is there, at his hip, putting pressure on his shoulder and **OHFUCKINGSHITPAINJESUSFUCK** \- he screams, he can’t help it, so much, too much -_

_...the little girl. He bucks up, against Paddy the medic, against Logan’s steady hands covered in blood - his blood - and mouths her name, the one she told him in her little voice as she held his hand and buried her head into his hip. Abeda. “Abeda,” he gasps. “Where is she? Abeda?”_

_“Ace, calm down!”_

“Where is she?”

 _Logan gets down, face to face with him, and grunts, “She_ was _the bomb. She had explosives on her, Wallace.”_

**  
  
  
  
**

He jolts awake, Abeda's name still stinging on his lips.

His body isn’t cooperating, it’s sore and aching and stiff. He panted into the hazy fluorescent lighting of the kitchen, swallowing dust and copper and just fighting to breathe around the steel trap that his chest has turned into. After a couple twitchy moments, he pushed off the floor into a sitting position against the cabinets and groans. _Must have drank a whole liquor store last night._ His head throbs as he pushes to his knees and then wobbles to his feet. The world tilts to the right and he grips the counter to keep from meeting the floor again. His fingers brush something bright and he focuses on it.

The Rover keys are on the counter, along with a white envelope.

His brain kicks into overdrive, and he pushes his abused body through a thorough search of his flat, though he’s not sure what, exactly, he’s looking for. Bits and pieces float through the haze, snippets of memory, and by the time he’s looking at his sad little bed and the pistol that is laying innocently on the drab green duvet he’s put all the pieces together. He ignores the weapon and stalks back into the kitchen.

He growls again, because there’s also a new mobile he hadn’t noticed, lying next to the envelope. _That son of a bitch…_ He snatches up the smartphone and powers it on, then grabs the envelope. It’s thick, and he knows...just knows...He debates tossing it into the trash, but since he hasn’t quite found a job yet…

He sticks it in the freezer and stares at the floor as he dials the number jotted on the white paper.

“I’m glad you called back, Wallace.”

He closes his eyes tightly. “You left the gun.”

“It’s got your prints on it.” A chuckle. “Can’t have that at the scene. I put rounds and an extra clip in the drawer. You know. Just in case.”

 _In case the fucking Mafiya want my fucking head. Yeah, thanks. 9mm Parabellum is really gonna stop an army._ He swallows. “I don’t want it.”

“Then get rid of it. But knowing you, you won’t.”

“I.” He stops. “I’m not the same person you knew.”

“Close enough, Ace. You did well.”

He barks a disbelieving laugh. “As did Lilah.” He scowled. “When did the CIA start training children to do their dirty work? When did the Americans start making children into…” He stops. He can’t finish that. He _won’t_ finish that. He knows James won’t answer. He’s got his secrets, ones that he’s got to keep, but Christ...he was _there._ He saw what happened. He’d called for the medvac. He’d held Wallace’s hand as Paddy worked to keep the blood in his body. He’d told him that it would be alright, that it would get easier.

And then he had to go and…

“Is she actually yours?”

Again, silence over the line. He resists the urge to throw the phone against the wall again. Instead, he busies himself with making a cup of tea while he waits for that answer. It doesn’t come until he settles onto the couch and stares at the sculpture of the boy soldier.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Fuck off.” He gulps down the hot liquid, relishing the burn in his mouth, in his throat. His loose tooth - teeth, there’s two loose molars on his upper right jaw, from the pistol or the heavy Russian fist, he’s not certain - throbs now. “I have a concussion. My ears are still ringing.”

“Why didn’t you go to the emergency room?”

“Accidents and Emergencies?” He huffs out a dark laugh. “Because I got seven shades of shit beaten out of me, James. I could barely stay awake. The bloody cabbie didn’t even wait for the fare before laying tracks off my street.” He sips more tea, feeling his belly warming. At least he doesn’t have any internal injuries. Gut injuries are nearly as bad as head injuries in terms of severity and danger. At least, according to Paddy. “Why me?”

“Because you can handle it.”

“Yeah, because I’m handling it so fucking well right now.”

“You are.”

He snorted. “You aren’t looking at me.”

“You are drinking tea.”

He rolls his eyes and decides that yes, his orbital bone is cracked because fuck that hurt. “You made your daughter into a killer.” There. He says it. “She’s a weapon.” More silence. He growls into it. “And you made me watch it.”

“It’s not your fault.”

 _And isn’t that just the kicker?_ “I.” He swallows hard and slams the cup onto his coffee table. Why does he even have the coffee table, anyway? It’s not as if he has any company. And he’s going to have to give the girl - _what’s her name again?_ \- his new number. He’s going to have to move. He doesn’t like it here.

“Wallace. It’s not your - “

“And right there is where you can fuck off. Then you can continue fucking off until you end up right back where you started. And then you can fuck the fuck off again.”

James chuckles. “It’s a never-ending cycle of fucking off with you, isn’t it, Ace?”

“I insisted on bringing her with.” He swallows the burn of anger and disgust. “Had her right there, in my arms until she wriggled out. Couldn’t feel the bomb on her. I tried calling her back, but... She was a weapon, James.” His grip tightens on the mobile, and it creaks in his large hand. “I damn near killed everyone because of my bleeding fucking heart. And then you come in, asking to cash in the favour by having me babysit your daughter because one of your damned deals went south, and she ends up being your bloody ace in the hole!” He laughs, even more darkly than before. “I should have known. Why would you bring a little girl along on something like that? Idiot. I’m an idiot.” He shakes his head. “ _Fucking…_ ”

“I’m sorry.”

“You are bloody well not sorry, you shit!” He pushes to his feet, ignoring the way the world skews in his vision. “You are not sorry. Don’t lie to me.”

“I didn’t want to disturb you.”

He shakes his head. “What are you on about?”

“On the floor, last night. You...you were out like a light. Peaceful. I didn’t want to wake you.”

He huffs out another laugh, quieter. “And you were right to do that, I might have taken you out at the knees. I don’t take kindly to being woken up much anymore.”

“Use the money, Ace. Please. It’s the least I can do for you.”

“Since you basically used me?” It comes out harsh, and he doesn’t care. He’s too exhausted, too keyed up, too bloody sore for niceties. “Gonna buy myself a ticket out of this hellhole. Lose this number. Don’t call me ever again. I’m keeping the mobile since I busted mine after listening to your shit. Goodbye.” He stabs the ‘end call’ button and tosses it onto the floor. “Stupid. _Stupid_.” He levers himself off the couch and heads to the loo to gag up the tea into the toilet. He lowers his head to the seat and fights the dry heaves that seize his stomach. God damn it. Damn it. Bastard. When he’s calmed down enough, he goes back to the cabinet and grabs his medicine, fumbling and dropping it into the sink - that is still running full out. He closes his eyes. He feels like screaming, sobbing, grabbing that damned gun and blowing his fucking brains out.

 

 _Either you leak, or you_ leak.

 

_What are you? Strong._

_What do you have? Purpose._

_And where are you?_

_Here._

 

“Fuck.”

The bottle of codeine breaks against the wall, and his fist follows, shattering the mirror in front of him.

 


End file.
